In a recent study, researchers at the Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging at Tufts University found that curcumin, the active ingredient in turmeric, seems to reduce weight gain and retard the growth of fat tissue in mice that were fed high-fat diets. Their research is published in the May 2009 issue of the Journal of Nutrition. "Weight gain is the result of the growth and expansion of fat tissue, which cannot happen unless new blood vessels form, a process known as angiogenesis," said senior author Mohsen Meydani, director of the center's Vascular Biology Laboratory, ... Read More
Economic Expansion: Teen Girls Gain Weight During Downturns
May 6, 2009 • By • 2 Comments
Fifteen- to 18-year-old females generally gain weight during weak economic periods, according to a report just published in the journal Social Science and Medicine. Researcher Jeremy Arkes of the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif., found the opposite is true for young men in that age range: They tend to gain weight when the economy is strong. Arkes drew his conclusions by analyzing data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, focusing on the years 1997 to 2004. After controlling for other variables known to affect weight (including a range of family characteristics), he ... Read More
The High Price of Inactivity
May 1, 2009 • By • Leave a Comment
Inactivity is killing us. Researchers in the United States, as well as those from universities and think tanks in Europe, Australia and China have documented the causal relationship between inactivity and poor health in general, and between inactivity, obesity and diabetes in particular. In the U.S., inactivity is now the No. 2 cause of death, ranking just behind the No. 1 cause (smoking) and ahead of No. 3 (alcohol). Costs are enormous for what the Canadian Fitness and Lifestyle Research Institute calls "the constellation of unhealthy diet, physical inactivity and excess body weight." ... Read More
Yet Another Reason Why We’re Fat
February 27, 2009 • By • Leave a Comment
According to a new study, the act of receiving a message touting the benefits of exercise can cause people to unconsciously compensate by ingesting more food. If the researchers are correct, our unconscious mind does not differentiate between thinking about exercise and actually doing it: It simply reacts to the concept with the desire for more nourishment. This suggests public-health campaigns urging people to get off their butts may have to be rethought. The majority of people who see such announcements but remain sedentary may actually be eating more than those who haven’t been ... Read More
Obesity Linked to Childhood Violence
February 6, 2009 • By • Leave a Comment
Children who are abused by their parents are more likely to grow up into obese adults, according to a new study that reveals an intriguing psychological dimension of a worldwide epidemic. The paper, just published in the journal Social Science & Medicine, is based on data from 1,650 people who participated in the National Survey of Midlife in the U.S. Researchers Emily Greenfield of Rutgers University and Nadine Marks of the University of Wisconsin-Madison examined the respondents' answers to three sets of questions: those involving memories of childhood punishment, current eating ... Read More
When Healthy Met Junky
January 21, 2009 • By • Leave a Comment
It's tough being a 4-year-old, trying to figure out what foods are healthy. Take orange soda. It's got that fruity aspect, so it must be good for you, right? Same goes for potato chips. Or chicken nuggets. All have beneficial components, so they must be essentials of a good-for-you diet. Well, not exactly. But that's the way some children evaluate food choices, according to a series of studies run by Simone Nguyen, an associate professor of psychology at the University of North Carolina, Wilmington. "When children are presented with foods that have multiple ingredients, non-natural ... Read More
Of Obesity, Sweets and Numb Tongues
December 15, 2008 • By • Leave a Comment
More than 60 percent of adult Americans are obese, and ever-increasing levels of fat and sugar are sneaking into processed foods. Could blunted taste buds be partly to blame? Neuroscientists at Pennsylvania State University have discovered that obesity gradually numbs the tongues of rats, depriving them of taste sensations for sweet foods and spurring them to eat more and sweeter meals. While previous studies had suggested corpulence leads to an increased craving for sweet foods, little had been known about why fatter and leaner people have different levels of taste and desire for ... Read More
Walking the Gantlet Keeps Us Plump
December 10, 2008 • By • Leave a Comment
Although there’s a wealth of information circulating about living healthy, it’s still much easier and often cheaper to eat poorly in the United States than it is to eat properly. The gantlet that low-income kids must run to eat right is even longer, according to a research brief put out by the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research today. In examining the barriers affecting adolescents in California specifically, the researchers led by Theresa A. Hastert reported that among the 480,000 deemed obese in the Golden State, a higher percentage of those with low incomes were obese ... Read More
Pushback on Obesity: An African-American View
October 15, 2008 • By • 1 Comment
Children who now spend more time in front of a screen (usually snacking) than on the playground can’t help but pack on the pounds, and reports of childhood obesity have reached epidemic proportions. The statistics are especially dismal for African-American teen girls; studies show they start out life at the same weight as their white counterparts but see their body mass index blossom in adolescence. African-American women between the ages of 12 and 19 are nearly 60 percent more likely to be overweight; less likely to eat fruits, vegetables and whole grains; and less likely to be ... Read More
The Danger of Fat-Think
August 31, 2008 • By • Leave a Comment
Obesity causes severe health problems. It's also a source of severe shame. Just perceiving oneself as fat, in fact, may produce greater emotional damage than actually being overweight. A German study by Bärbel-Maria Kurth and Ute Ellert in the June Deutsches Ärzteblatt International finds that young people who think they're fat suffer a poorer quality of life than truly fat people. In their study — "Perceived or True Obesity: Which Causes More Suffering in Adolescents?" — Kurth and Ellert asked 6,654 German boys and girls, aged 11 to 17, questions about six aspects of their quality of ... Read More
